Practice No. 6 — The family enterprise
Business Succession Planning
From $2,800 · coordinated with your CPA
Getting a family business from one generation to the next — or to a worthy buyer — without the transition becoming the estate fight your competitors read about.
For the owner whose company is the largest asset on the balance sheet and the least planned-for, and the family where one child runs the business and two do not.
How we handle it
A Virginia family business is usually the most valuable thing its owner will ever pass on, and the most fragile in transit. Sixty percent of the value can be goodwill that walks out the door if a death is followed by six months of uncertainty: customers drift, key employees take calls from recruiters, and the surviving spouse is left running a company they never wanted at the worst moment to sell it. Succession planning is simply deciding, while everyone is alive and calm, what happens instead.
The legal toolkit is well worn: buy-sell agreements funded with life insurance so a partner's death produces a check instead of a stalemate; operating-agreement provisions that say who votes the shares during incapacity; gradual gifting or sale of interests to the successor child, with the non-business children treated fairly through other assets — fairly, we say deliberately, because equally is often impossible and pretending otherwise is how estates end up in litigation. We draft the instruments and, more usefully, we chair the family meetings where the real decisions get made.
We work alongside your CPA and financial advisor rather than around them: valuation discounts, basis planning, and the state of the federal estate-tax exemption all move the design, and Virginia's lack of a state estate tax simplifies exactly one line of it. What you get at the end is not a binder for a shelf; it is an operating plan your company could execute next Tuesday if it had to.
What the fee includes
- A succession audit: who owns what, what the documents say now, and where the failure points are
- Buy-sell agreement drafted or repaired, with a funding plan that actually pays out
- Operating agreement and bylaw revisions covering death, disability, and deadlock
- Gifting or sale-to-successor design, coordinated with your CPA on valuation and basis
- Equalization planning for children outside the business: insurance, real estate, trusts
- Key-employee retention terms for the people the buyer or the heirs cannot afford to lose
- Your personal estate plan updated so it pulls in the same direction as the corporate documents
- A facilitated family meeting where the plan is said out loud, to everyone, once
The honest timeline
Weeks 1–2 — Succession audit
Documents reviewed, owners heard separately, failure points named in a short written memo.
Weeks 3–6 — Design
The structure chosen with your CPA at the table: buy-sell terms, transfer schedule, equalization plan.
Weeks 6–10 — Documents & funding
Agreements executed, insurance bound, the first tranche of any transfer completed.
Annually — The review
Valuations move, children change their minds, tax law shifts. One meeting a year keeps the plan true.
What to bring
Or what to gather — none of it needs to be perfect.
- Current corporate documents — operating agreement, bylaws, any existing buy-sell
- Rough financials or the latest valuation, if one exists
- The cap table as it stands: who owns what percentage today
- Existing life-insurance policies on owners and key people
- An honest read on which family members want the business, and which only want its value
Questions we hear about business succession planning
My partner and I are 50/50. What happens if one of us dies without a plan?
The surviving partner ends up in business with the decedent's spouse or children — who may want income the company cannot spare, a sale the survivor cannot fund, or involvement nobody wants. A funded buy-sell agreement replaces that scenario with a valuation method and a check. It is the single highest-value document in this practice area.
One child works in the business. How do we treat the others fairly?
Fairly is rarely equally. Splitting company stock three ways puts two non-working children in the working child's boardroom forever: a recipe for resentment and buyouts. The usual answer is the business to the child who runs it, with life insurance, real estate, or other assets balancing the ledger for the rest, and the reasoning explained to everyone while you are alive to explain it.
Do we need to worry about estate taxes?
Virginia repealed its state estate tax, so the question is federal. The federal exemption is high but written in pencil (Congress revisits it regularly), and successful business estates can cross it faster than owners expect once real estate and insurance are counted. We design so that a future exemption cut is an adjustment, not an emergency.
Often planned together
Wills & Revocable Trusts
Flat fee from $1,200 individual · $1,950 couple
A will or revocable trust drafted for Virginia law and actually funded: deed, retitling, and every designation confirmed in writing.
Probate & Estate Administration
From $3,500 · scoped in writing at the first meeting
We handle the court, you handle the family: qualification, inventory, the Commissioner of Accounts, and the final accounting, carried.
Powers of Attorney & Advance Directives
Flat fee from $350
A durable power of attorney a bank will actually honor, and an advance medical directive your family can actually follow.
Put your affairs in order this season.
Thirty minutes on the telephone, no charge, and you will know exactly which documents you need and exactly what they cost. That is the whole commitment.
Or telephone the office: (804) 555-0158